


If You've Had Enough Say When

by Kerink



Series: This Is Not A Test, This Is The Real Thing [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Flushed Romance | Matesprits, M/M, Post-Sburb/Sgrub
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-09
Updated: 2015-07-09
Packaged: 2018-04-08 11:19:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,801
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4302798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kerink/pseuds/Kerink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Do you think I can do this?” he asked at last. “Do you think that this is even something that's doable? The Empress has been ruling since before history began. Her heiresses are barely gnats to her. Do you really think that even with an army, even with your experience, even with an all-out war, this is even something we can win?”</p><p> </p><p>Rufioh's hands rubbed gently up and down Karkat's back and the man let out a sleepy purr. “If anyone can save us, Karkat, it's you. If this fails, if you somehow die, Alternia is doomed.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	If You've Had Enough Say When

**Author's Note:**

> Special thanks to my beta, uglytrolls.

It was already early evening and they were still going at it. The sun was teasing the horizon and the gaps in the branches were turning milky blue. The temperature of the air was steadily rising, signaling the growing danger. But instead of upgrading their shelter or critically surveying the spot they'd picked to camp for the day, they were still fucking fighting.

Almost four sweeps ago Karkat had been commissioned to play a game that had ended the world as he knew it. Three sweeps and twenty-three perigees ago Karkat had led his team to victory, created a universe, been trapped for the rest of the foreseeable future, and met up with a gang of silly aliens. Twenty-three perigees ago Karkat, the remains of trollkind, and the last eight humans alive had defeated Lord English and escaped the nightmare that was SGRUB. Twelve perigees ago Karkat had wandered deep enough into the recesses of this new Alternia and had found The Summoner.

And now, now Karkat sat on a log in the rising sun. A god amongst men, arms and legs crossed tightly, a scowl on his face, fighting with a grown man who had the audacity to question his leadership abilities.

“It's just a shit plan,” Rufioh said, running his hand through his spiked hair. His dye was fading, he got edgy when his dye was fading. “I don't know what you saw in the history books that lead you to believe that it was anything other than a shit plan, but I have it on good authority that it is a goddamn cluster fuck of a _shit plan_!” He was pacing now, wings limp at his back and bouncing on his ass.

“I'm tired of having blood on my hands,” Karkat said firmly. “I'm tired of killing, I'm tired of fighting. This will work.” Young black eyes, red only just licking at the edges, tracked the adult as he shuffled through the dead leaves. “I figured you'd be happy to be free from the similar burden.”

Rufioh stopped to laugh in disbelief, holding his hands out between him and Karkat in a half calming half defensive gesture. “Don't, just--” He sucked in a sharp breath. “You know your ancestor, may he suffer no more, tried to have a peaceful revolution and look how that turned out. Peace and love and friendship don't work for trolls. We're not wired like that. The Condescension made sure of it. You're just not old enough to understand the full scope of just how fucked up this society is.”

Karkat sucked his lips between his teeth and straightened his back. He was prickling all over. “You're trying to fucking tell me, ME, that I don't understand how Alternia works? Is that what's fucking happening here? Are you really standing there trying to convince me,” he uncrossed his arms and pressed his fingertips roughly to his chest, “that I don't understand how harsh and cruel and unreasonable and unforgiving trollkind can be?” Rufioh flinched back and looked away, worrying his lip. “And need I fucking remind you that your revolution didn't work either!” A heavy silence fell between them and Karkat counted the pregnant seconds with calming breaths.

With a tight voice and a tense smile Rufioh offered the ground: “Did you know that cows can sleep standing up, but they can only dream lying down?”

“Stop. You unbelievable bastard.”

Rufioh took a deep breath and held it for a moment. His hands hung at his sides and one hand twitched a meaningless gesture. “I just...” He exhaled loudly and rubbed his face. “It's just that the cow is such a fascinating creature a-and--”

Karkat stood in the flurry of a dark cloak too big for him. “If you don't stop trying to change the fucking subject to animal facts I will literally string you up by your own bulge and mask this campsite as a legislacerator killing ground.” There was a beat where Karkat dared The Summoner to call his bluff. “Fucking look at me, Rufioh!” He tried for a command, but it came out a pained whine. It was embarrassing and Karkat could sickle himself on the spot for it, but it got Rufioh to look up in alarm so he rolled with it. “Why does it always have to be such a goddamn production to get you to just tell me what you're feeling? Be straight forward with me for once, this is important! You're the one that made this a fight so just own up to it and file your complaint so we can move on.”

“Alright,” Rufioh said, swallowing thickly. “Then let's just forget I said anything.” Turning his attention away from the other, he finally began setting up a makeshift shelter. They had a number of supplied in their sylladexes but after their last raid they'd lost their tent. Thanks to Karkat's low blood color, they had more than enough blankets to keep out the chill of the dim season. But now in the midseason when the sun and the moons shared equal time in the sky he didn't need them. Rufioh began trying to make some sort of tent out of one and some nearby branches, not letting the young prophet out of his peripheral vision.

With a sound of pure anguish, Karkat's stomped flat and firm against the ground and he pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes. “Why do you do this to me? All the perigees I've known you and you _always_ do this. As soon as shit gets too hot to handle you whip out some horseshit fact and ignore me. This isn't just shitting around anymore, Rufioh, we are overthrowing the fucking Empress, we are up-heaving the social order, you have to stop keeping yourself from me.” He sighed and took his hands away, brows knitted and frown etched deep in his face. He wasn't even ten yet and already lines were forming on his soft features. Stress and worry and fear boiled him from the inside out.

“It's late,” the words were quiet, controlled. “We should get some rest. We've got to wake up early tomorrow to get to the next town before sunrise and we've hardly got the money for fresh supplies let alone an inn.”

“Stop.”

“If we don't find some bodies to rob we're going to have to hustle enough to fit a sermon in before we can settle and honestly we won't get very many donations if we don't really--” he clenched his fists for emphasis, “if you don't just really give it to them, you know?”

Karkat took a step forward. “Rufioh, stop it.”

“And there's no way we could get to town, give a great sermon, buy supplies, and find a place all in one night. It'd be two at best.” He smiled sadly down at him. “And that's just really not going to fit into the schedule. They're expecting you at the next church over and it was already a push when we agreed to five nights travel time from one to the other, and that last raid sent us way back. We don't even know if those that got out alive know to keep pushing to the other church or if they turned back or if they still even follow you now.”

Karkat placed a hand on the man's thick forearm, looking up at him pleadingly. “Stop, please Rufioh, shut the fuck up, I don't care about the schedule, talk to me!”

“If they don't there's no reason to worry, it happens all the time! People just can't handle the reality of being part of a rebel group. Especially the young ones, or the ones new to the cause. You know, I found that higherbloods were less likely to leave at the first sign of trouble than the lowerbloods. That's so weird, huh? I've been thinking of writing a pamphlet about it. Something about privilege, that they know that even if they're caught nothing's going to really happen to them. Not compared to what lowbloods have to lose by even looking at one of your posters.”

“Just tell me what's wrong!” Karkat begged, both hands clasped around his arm now. He was shaking the man so he wouldn't shake himself. Trying to jostle him out of his monologue. “Why do I always fucking have to force you to face reality! There is no rebellion if we don't have a plan! If you have an honest to god critique of my ideas or-or if you're scared-- I know you didn't want to get back into this, I know, Rufioh, but I'm sorry, I needed you! I still need you!”

“But you know I'm so shit at writing,” he laughed a dry and tired little lilt. “I'd get it all muddled up and make it look too much like highbloods are doing it all for us and that freedom is some novelty to be _given_ to us by them. And then all those seadwellers who think it's fashionable to wear the symbol of The Holy Signless' suffering will just use it to jack off to their own superiority.”

Defeated, Karkat leaned his forehead against the man's shoulder. “You pan-cracked moron,” he sniffed. “I don't know what to blame more – PTSD from your stupid fucking war or Serket's claws in you.” The words were directed to no one. He knew Rufioh wasn't listening. He jumped as he felt strong arms wrap around him and he looked up.

“Come on,” Rufioh said, smile warm. “Let's get to sleep. I fixed the tent.”

“Yeah,” Karkat sighed, shoulders slumping. “Alright fine.”

Karkat let Rufioh lead him into the makeshift shelter and he collapsed onto the blanket haphazardly thrown over the bare earth. Rufioh knelt before him and began removing his boots. He was methodical about it and Karkat shuddered at the feel of the large hands on his calf. Karkat watched him carefully pick at the knot before loosening each lace as though it were a fallen featherbeast grub. He bent his ankle as Rufioh slipped the shoe off of him before he set it aside to repeat the gesture with the other.

He could never get over sharing the planet with adults. Karkat had thought it was bad enough just trying to hide his blood from his peers, but now having to hide his very existence from adults that would make to eat him or worse was something else. Something else that he was glad he didn't have to grow up with. Karkat swallowed as he watched Rufioh, the poor guarded, terrified, pan-cracked man, and wasn't able to fathom what it had been like for him. Especially with his wings. Maybe the war hadn't hurt him first. Maybe it had just deepened scars caused from his youth. Maybe he was right, maybe Karkat didn't understand what it was like to truly grow up a mutant on Alternia.

When Rufioh was finished he looked up at Karkat. His smiled turned quizzical and Karkat realized that he'd been zoning out so much he hadn't been getting ready at all. Quickly he dove for the laces on his cloak and he shrugged it off. He tossed it aside and swat Rufioh's hands when he made to fold it. Karkat tugged him closer and scoot over to make room. Rufioh kicked off his shoes and lay down at Karkat's side. He could only sleep on either his back or front due to his horns.

Karkat curled up against his side, tucking himself under his offered arm, and sighed. The tent was cramped and humid, barely doing anything to filter the virgin sunlight that snuck through the gaps in the leaves. It looked as though if either of them breathed wrong it would collapse. Karkat didn't want to think about what kind of mess Rufioh's massive rack would make if he sat up too quickly any time during their stay under it.

“What's wrong?” he said softly, calloused fingers combing through Karkat's greasy chop of hair.

“Nothing,” Karkat grunted.

Rufioh gave an amused hum and Karkat could feel his smile in the way the ropes of muscle in his neck and collar twitched. “There's always something you're worrying over. Spill it, I know complaining helps calm you down.”

It took everything within him for Karkat not to rip Rufioh's throat out. Instead he settled for gripping the front of his shirt tightly in a white-knuckle fist. “Why don't you like my plan? What's wrong with trying to love people? What's wrong with trying to understand them? My team worked best when I stopped trying to order them around, when I became their friend and they trusted me and they believed in me and I was there for them. Granted I was a total fuck up most of the time, but the times I got it right it was incredible how good we worked together, how much we got done. I created a universe through friendship, Noir was defeated through love... I killed The Condescension once while backed by people who cared about _me_. Why don't you think I could do it again?”

A hand took his chin and Karkat was forced to look at Rufioh's tired smile yet again. “Exactly. For all your love and friendship and understanding and mutual respect, you still had to _kill_ The Condescension.” Rufioh's tongue darted out to quickly lick the lip he bruised earlier with all his worrying. “Those things are fine to build an army, but it's still an army at the end of the night, Karkat. You refuse to kill but you don't get it... You can't defeat the empire by loving it so much the hemospectrum collapses.”

Karkat scrambled to sit up, his anxiety flaring again. He had to sit up to think, to see clearly. His gaze remained on Rufioh, searching the man's face for any sign of understanding. “But if I can make my followers act that way and truly, genuinely believe it, if I can expand my sphere of influence far enough, then it will just collapse! If we all just see one another as equals and mean it, then there won't be casteism anymore! And it's the casual, everyday casteism that we as civilians have to over-come first! If we can get the people to love one another then the laws will dissolve naturally on their own. People will stop supporting the Empress and-and--”

Rufioh too sat up, his smile fond. He ran his knuckles along the side of Karkat's face, the gesture slowing Karkat's rant in its tracks as their eyes locked. “You're so innocent,” he said softly, “listen to you...” He thumbed below Karkat's eye, studying his features. “It's not that simple. It's institutional hemoism that gets people killed. It's institutional hemoism that needs to be overthrown. You really think that the highest bloods, the ones with real power, are going to hand over their thrones just because you bat those long eyelashes at them?” Karkat tried to glare and Rufioh hushed him. “Your plan will work if we have sweeps and sweeps and sweeps to work,” he said, voice lowering as much as he could without being completely condescending. “You may have that kind of time with your God Tier, but what about the rest of us? You're going to have to out-live multiple generations of seadwellers for that kind of slow-moving, people-focused progress to work. And what about the thousands if not millions of lowbloods with fractional lifespans who have to live in poverty and starvation, who have to live with curable illnesses or injuries, who become slaves or food? I hear what you're saying Karkat, I do, Signless, please believe me that I understand. But you're only nine, you don't understand. You haven't seen law, you haven't seen the army, you haven't see politics. You don't understand.”

“I'm almost ten,” he choked out. It was the only thing he could think to say.

Rufioh laughed, true and pure and it made him glow. “Okay, you're only ten. That doesn't change anything. At ten you'll be able to enter the workforce but how long will it be before you really grasp the way the Empire's set up? Will you ever?” He swallowed and took Karkat's face into his hand. “The only reason I saw it was because I worked hard and got lucky and sassed the right people and sucked up to the right people and climbed high up in the military. And I still lost.”

“So what?” Karkat said, burying his face into the man's palm. “You're only fifteen. How much more fucking life experience could you possibly have over me with that kind of age gap?”

Rufioh moved his hand to cover Karkat's mouth and leaned in close. “Hey, hey now,” he chided. “Let's not bring age into this okay?”

Karkat licked the hand to free himself. “Face it, you age Rufioh. This is no Neverland.”

“Even Neverland has evil,” he grumbled, wiping his hand on the side of his jeans.

“Besides, you were the one who brought age into this.”

Rufioh laughed again and scooped Karkat into his arms. “Yeah well...” he countered very tactfully and convincingly. He fell back onto their makeshift bed, Karkat against his chest.

Once more the two fell into silence. Karkat's upper torso rose and fell with Rufioh's steady breathing and the other troll's cooler body was a relief against the humidity and roasting sun. He let Rufioh's words toss about in his head for a moment, trying to wrap his mind around the point he was making and the reintroduction to the knowledge of just how daunting this rebellion was going to be. Karkat needed to accept that there was going to be bloodshed, that he was once more going to lead people he cared about to their deaths. He just had to pray that this time he was going to get the prize out of it.

“Do you think I can do this?” he asked at last. “Do you think that this is even something that's doable? The Empress has been ruling since before history began. Her heiresses are barely gnats to her. Do you really think that even with an army, even with your experience, even with an all-out war, this is even something we can win?”

Rufioh's hands rubbed gently up and down Karkat's back and the man let out a sleepy purr. “If anyone can save us, Karkat, it's you. If this fails, if you somehow die, Alternia is doomed.” He cracked open his eyes and tilt his head up to look at Karkat. “Not only are you too young to have began your filial duties, but The Condescension would have you culled before you could even think to fill a bucket.” Again his hand found Karkat's hair, petting him soothingly. “You're the last redblood.” He lay back down, closing his eyes again. “And that's why I came out of retirement, to keep you safe...”

With his head propped in the crooks of his folded arms, Karkat watched him drift. His hands hadn't stopped attempting to sooth away his insomnia, so Rufioh couldn't possibly be as gone as he was pretending to be. “You really did come back to all this just for me, didn't you?”

Rufioh hummed quietly. “What else would I have been doing? Trying to drink away the memory of my mistakes? Of the lives I threw away? Letting my hive become overrun with animals? Okay I mean I miss the animals but this is still better. But just marginally.” He sighed, drawing the younger troll closer. “Besides, no one else would treat you how you deserve to be treated.”

Unable to stop himself, Karkat choked out: “And how's that?”

“Like the god you are. Like a prince. Like a king.” Rufioh continued to pretend to be totally out of it as he spoke. “Fed only the best food in the universe, draped in silks and gold, sitting on a throne and surrounded by softness and finery. Never fearing for your life, never worrying or stressing about the people around you, knowing that you're capable of doing anything, helping anyone. Not hating yourself, not questioning yourself, not doubting yourself. Knowing with your heart and soul what I know already to be true: That you're the most amazing troll ever hatched.”

Karkat felt his heart speed up and stop all at the same time. He'd had suspicions about their relationship for awhile now, but Rufioh had never let his guard down enough to show his hand. Even now, after everything, Karkat wasn't sure how much of what Rufioh said he could take at face value and how much he had to write off as the ramblings of a defensive, broken, tired man. How much was bullshit to throw Karkat off his trail, how much of it was Rufioh opening up for once?

But how much of his reading into Rufioh's words was due to his own issues? He couldn't always let his paranoia and self-loathing guide him. Something told him he was being honest, something in him felt right. Karkat placed his hands on either side of Rufioh's head and hoisted himself up. He pressed his lips to Rufioh's in a chaste kiss, barely a whisper of touch in case he was wrong. And he felt the slightest kiss back before Rufioh eased him away.

“We can't,” he said. “I'm sorry.”

Karkat grit his teeth and averted his gaze, face heating in embarrassment. “No, don't be sorry. It's... It's my fault. I should have realized the compromising position it puts you in. Tied up with a barely-legal mutant who'll never be able to fulfill his filial duties... I wouldn't want to fuck with me either.”

Rufioh's hands took back up rubbing the tension from Karkat's back. “It's not that. I don't give a shit about filial duties. I haven't faced a drone since I left the cavalreapers, I'm a terrorist, remember? Nothing like catching a bounty 'cause he's got his pants down for a murder robot.” Rufioh quirked his head to get a better look at him. “It's because you're my god, Karkat. A boy who left to make a universe but returned to save another. You're The Second Coming, a prophet sent here to free us. I can't be your matesprit and your disciple at the same time.”

“The Disciple was,” Karkat snorted.

That made Rufioh grin. “Okay, bad argument.” His smile fell. “But still... I don't think I could. Can. I don't know...”

“No it's okay I understand,” he lied. Karkat settled back against Rufioh's side, closing his eyes to hide from the harsh reality of the waking world more than from the increasing pain of the sunlight.

“Well,” Rufioh yawned, “at least one of us does.”

**Author's Note:**

> Based on a set of drabbles which can be read here: http://kerink.tumblr.com/post/86377008199/title-fandom-homestuck-rp-verse-pairing
> 
> i'm also on twitter (kerinky) & tumblr (kerink)


End file.
